Juhani
by SupcommMonroee
Summary: Aboard the Ebon Hawk, on the hunt for the Star Forge, two Jedi cannot sleep. Art credits to Corbin J. Hunter.


"You… You killed my father, you killed my people, you treat us like animals… You deserve to die!" Juhani snarled, withdrawing her saber from its clip and settling into a striking position.

"Give in and embrace your hate! You're no better than me! You're nothing!"

The Cathar was inflated with a terrible heat of anger. A sweltering rage, one that threatened to tear her apart lest she fail to exact her revenge at that exact moment. In her mind swirled the memories of Taris, and how the last of what was precious to her was lost. She remembered the bombs falling, and the terrible roar of fire from the Basilisks descending into the city.

_ Juhani remembered the intimate details of every moment. How her mother cradled her against her chest as streaks of lightning fell from the sky. Tarisian police and the Republic garrison charged into battle, only to be mowed down before they could even fire a shot. In those opening hours, Juhani and her family hid quietly in their Lower City apartment. The whole structure rumbled and shook with each new detonation, or the arrival of another Basilisk war droid not too far away._

_ She remembered when the planet was, for the most part, pacified and occupied. _

_ Mandalorian troops and their allies drilled and patrolled ceaselessly, ever-ready for the next phase of their titanic struggle. Those who dared to provoke and resist found no mercy, and thousands paid the ultimate price every day for even the most miniscule act of stubborn resistance. Men could be shot on sight for disparaging remarks and impolite gestures. Women would be killed or worse for the unforgivable sin of attempting to skim food from Mandalorian depots to feed their children._

_ Juhani felt lucky to some degree in the opening act of the Siege of Taris. Her family was deep enough in the bowels of the city to avoid suffocation under the jackboot of total occupation, yet sufficiently distant from the disparate Republic stragglers attempting to hold out against the Mandalorian onslaught hoping that salvation would soon arrive in the form of a formidable Republic fleet. No such salvation would come in the near future. But for a time, Juhani and her family knew some small amount of peace._

_ But as was the statistical reality for most of Taris, Juhani would not enjoy this plateau of peace for long. It was common knowledge that Cathar were quick to anger, and to a Mandalorian warrior riding high on a wave of power and confidence after the devastating blitz of Taris' defenses, such a species would be a charming source of fun._

_ And so it was that on one of many tragic days it would all change._

_ Juhani, her mother, and her father returned to their apartment complex after a hard afternoon of collecting scrap from the rotting skeletons of Republic warships suspended in the Lower City by the bottom ends of the skyscrapers they plowed through on the way down, who were both the ships' victims and brakes._

_ The circular walk was devoid of any activity, as usual. Two Mandalorian fighters emerged from an apartment. Burdened with the spoils of war, they laughed and joked while they tore up abandoned dwellings for anything of value. One of them, a Twi''lek, lay down his pack when he took notice of the three Cathar that had just entered. He stormed over._

_ Juhani's father ushered her and her mother behind him, and clutched their bag of useful scrap close to his chest. The Twi'lek demanded it. Juhani's father refused. Yelling. He threw a punch._

_ Juhani's world changed. Her mother fled in horror, pulling Juhani along by her hand. The Mandalorians laughed. Three tendrils of smoke rose from separate holes in the Cathar male's head as he lay still on the permacrete floor. The apartment door closed behind them. Juhani's mother sequestered Juhani under her bed while she gripped a vibroknife. They waited. And waited._

_ Juhani's mother finally left, only to return crestfallen and silent. Neither of the two would speak of the father and mate they had lost ever again. _

_ Life went on, but the colors seemed dull. The life was sucked from the lives of both Juhani and her mother. Feeding the two of them on one paltry salary was a task too great to be done alone, and in short order Juhani's mother was sucked into a prison of debt. A meager sum to many, but to two Cathar females in the Lower City under Mandalorian occupation, it might as well have been a millionaire's fortune._

_ Eventually, feeding the both of them was a task too great for even generous borrowing from the Exchange to handle. Each day, the portions that Juhani's mother ate seemed to shrink little by little, until it seemed as though she was on a shipwrecked crew's last-ditch survival rations. Despite such extreme food budgeting on behalf of her mother, Juhani could feel herself growing hungrier with each passing day._

_ Then, her mother simply faded away. Collapsed in the cantina that paid her miniscule wage. After three nights on her bed under the care of her daughter, she closed her eyes to sleep once more, and merely never opened them again._

_ Much as the two of them had not spoken of their lost father and mate, Juhani alone now simply never spoke of what happened. No torrential downpour of pain and sadness could ever give way in her heart, but on the outside the last of her lively, fiery Cathar character was drained away._

_ The Exchange came to collect. With no money, they seized the most valuable object in the household: a young Cathar girl with her will broken. She learned her routine well; yes master, no master, as you wish master. It was only four days until she was brought to the auction floor with fourteen other girls. Some were a bit older, and some were a bit younger. The freshest of the lot couldn't have been over the age of twelve, while the oldest wasn't a day over twenty-five._

_ Mandalorians and Exchange thugs occupied all the chairs and lined the walls, eager to own their very own slave girl. First was a young Twi'lek girl whose only guardian, her father, was lost to the first bombs. She was won in a quick but brutal bidding war which ended in its victor seizing the endowed teenager for 15,000 credits. For peacetime auctions, it would be a steal. But when a world is being besieged by an army with ready slavers among its ranks, and on a planet of such metropolitan scale, that much for a single slave would be a hefty fortune._

_ The next seven went at average prices. There were three Zeltron girls, a human, another Twi'lek, a Zabrak, and finally, a Cathar girl just like Juhani. A disgusting wretch of a Neo-Crusader quartermaster had seized her. Just as she was transferred into his ownership, he forced her into his lap to watch the proceedings with him. Juhani shuddered to imagine herself enduring the same fate, but the brash and offensive protests that would normally leave her lips never came. She remained silent as she was guided to the head of the auction stage._

_ Bidding started. 1,000. 5,000. 7,500. Explosion._

_ The far wall across from the stage caved in, crushing at least a dozen men underneath rotting permacrete. The sound of blasterfire and lightsabers whizzing brought the entire hall to their feet, and rushing out through the breach. Amidst the dust and scuffle, not a single detail of the battle was apparent until a single Jedi barreled into the hall. He blasted five Mandalorians and an Exchange gunman into the ground with the Force, and as each rose in piecemeal, he sliced them cleanly and efficiently across the chest and neck with his brilliant blue saber._

_ A black cape billowed behind him and a Mandalorian-style mask disguised his features. As the fight died down and the last Mandalorians and thugs fled out a side door to regroup and continue the fight elsewhere, a single wounded Rodian sought to execute one last act of resistance. He mustered his strength and sat up, gripping a blaster pistol and firing a single shot at the Jedi's head. This was effortlessly deflected, and the Rodian's chest was impaled with the same stroke that deflected his shot in a little flourish. _

_ The victorious Jedi removed his mask as a mixed platoon of Republic infantrymen and young Jedi filed into the room, waiting for their leader's orders to pursue the stragglers._

_ He swiped beads of sweat from his brow, surveying with disgust the activity that his foes participated in only moments before._

_ Juhani could not tear her eyes away from the Jedi's striking face. Beneath the layer of mixed sweat, blood, and dirt that permeated his visage, he seemed nothing like what she had imagined the legendary Jedi to be. Philosophers of justice, though distant from the action. This is how many viewed the Jedi, but now Juhani's impression was irrevocably altered. He was a young and handsome man, perhaps only a year or two older than she. He had burst in at the head of a fighting formation and saved an auction house full of slaves, and now he was simply preparing to continue his fight. Even with only a temporary glance, of but half of his face, she was enraptured._

_ She would leave the planet with many other civilian refugees that the Republic had deemed high-priority. Never would she forget the valiant Jedi who arrived and freed her, and all the other slaves of Taris. Had she not seen him in action, she wouldn't have believed the reports: Mandalorian forces all over the planet were in full retreat as he led an entire Republic corps and battle-group to victory over the core of the Mandalorian army's vanguard forces._

_ In seeing the action of the Jedi on Taris, Juhani realized what she would do. What she would become. Against all odds, in the standard screenings that all refugees were put through before being allowed entrance into the core worlds, Juhani was found to be Force-sensitive. Although she and many others would generally be considered too old for training, the catastrophic losses of the Mandalorian Wars and the ensuing Jedi Civil War would deplete the ranks of the Jedi Order so harshly that age restrictions would be relaxed, if only for a time._

_Juhani trained. And Juhani became a Jedi, just like the man who had freed her._

"You… You will die for what you have done!" All those memories came to a boil. Xor was the same Mandalorian that put up the winning bid for her all those years ago on Taris, and now he was here on his knees, at the edge of death.

Such an easy thing to take his life. Justice for so many dead Cathar. Her father. Her mother.

Justice for the Cathar girl, and that Twi'lek girl.

Just as Juhani allowed the muscles of her arms to move for the beginning of that final swing to finally have her revenge, Coriff's strong arm held her right bicep.

"Don't do this, Juhani. Remember the Code," his firm but soft suggestion slowed the typhoon of revenge in the Cathar woman's mind to a halt, now wrestling with her restraint. "It's just what he wants."

Her eyes narrowed. "He deserves to die. For _everything_ he has done! He deserves far worse than what he shall receive…" her words were righteous and powerful, but her will not truly so.

"There is no emotion…" Coriff stated.

He drew away, and left Juhani to make her ultimate decision. Hate burned in her eyes towards the Twi'lek on his knees mere feet ahead, close enough for just one swift slash to end him forever. But the Code resonated in her mind.

"Do it, you pathetic _animal_! We're one and the same, and you know it!"

Juhani hesitated. There was no denying what she had to do. Ever since gaining her freedom she had worshiped the idea of the man who stormed into that auction house to save the slaves. She had worked ever since with all of her might to finally become a Jedi, to become an arbiter of truth and justice like those bold warriors with flashing blades who exterminated cruelty and evil wherever it emerged.

She had fallen once, due to her Cathar temper, but it could never happen again. Not like this.

"I… Help me, please! Do not let me give in to my anger again!" she pleaded the Jedi behind her to lend his moral strength to her struggle.

"There is no emotion…" he droned once more.

_"7,500 for the Cathar girl! Going once, going twice…"_

_ "Dirty _bitch,_ get back to the Lower City!"_

_ "There's nothing here worth selling. Cathar girl, you're coming with us."_

"_Give in and embrace your hate! You're no better than me! You're nothing!"_

Juhani drew upon the example that Coriff set as a pure and just Jedi. No matter the situation the crew of the Ebon Hawk arrived in, he set out to solve it with as little bloodshed as possible. When any impoverished or wounded wretch begged for help or money, he gave all he had without even a moment's thought. His mind was set on justice, just as the Jedi from Taris. The man that seemed to be so curiously similar.

"There is peace."

The sound a lightsaber deactivating filled the air, and Juhani's blade returned to her belt. She forced her anger back into the depths of her heart, and took a deep breath. She smiled, if only a little. There is peace.

"No, I will not do this. He may die, but it will not be out of my vengeance."

"You coward! You weak… ahhh…"

Xor collapsed into a heap of flesh upon the ground, blood spilling from his exposed wounds into the seams of the durasteel plating of the Manaan docking bay. With the death of the Twi'lek slaver, there died the manifestation of untold suffering and years of hardship. Ironically, he was the last connection Juhani had to her old life, and now this too passed. It was over, now and forever. She had her own peace, and to gain it she had not strayed from the path of peace. It was in such an achievement that her true victory was found.

Juhani again felt Coriff's strong touch, but this time his hand was on her shoulder.

"I hope this brings you some closure," the Jedi paused, carefully selecting his next words. "I'm proud of you. What you did right there is harder than any physical battle we'll ever fight. It's the battle with ourselves to do the right thing."

She smiled, turning her back on the lifeless corpse and enjoying the feeling of the last of her anger melting into nothingness. With her left arm, she brushed away Coriff's hand from her right shoulder.

"You make it seem easy," the Cathar muttered. She looked down and stepped past her Jedi comrade, still taking in the enormity of the situation. While she did indeed struggle, with only a little help, she stood strong. With her handicap, it was no small accomplishment.

The _Ebon Hawk_ departed Manaan for Korriban later that day.

"_There is no emotion, there is peace…"_

Alone in the common room Juhani sat, meditating. She pondered on the day's events, and how they brought doubt and uncertainty fresh to her mind. She no longer considered Xor, and the death of her family and history. This she laid peacefully to rest.

Instead, she considered another man.

_The first days alone after she slay Quatra were hellish. She fled the Enclave in a rush, bringing with her only the immediate essentials she gathered from her room. When the other masters and Belaya heard the news about Quatra and her apprentice, they scoured the compound in an attempt to find the fallen Cathar before she could disappear into the wilderness._

_Juhani got away._

_Each night she spent in the grove, the fear of being captured grew stronger and stronger. This fear evolved into hate, and her pain at losing Quatra solidified into a frozen shell of ferrocrete around her heart. _

_The first kath hounds she encountered believed her to be merely another meal. In groups of two and three they attacked, only to be cut down in a wild frenzy, those beasts so vile as to tear Juhani from her sorrow. But as the days turned to weeks, the attacks stopped. The hounds would avert their gaze and get out of her way, allowing the fallen Jedi to pass through unmolested. In time, they even brought her tribute: Fine cuts from the freshest kills, for their twisted new matriarch._

_Juhani grew less scared, and more spiteful. Alone with the hounds of the plains, the darkness swirling inside her merged with the brutal predator spirit. Now, they were her pets. Her servants. Her dark power obviously surpassed that of the foolish Jedi, and that truly was why she was cast out. Quatra fell out of weakness._

_The first Jedi they sent to find her never came close to the grove. He was too young, too inexperienced to track with the Force, and he returned empty-handed to the Enclave days later._

_But the second man was different. Coriff tore through the swarms of her pets as if they were targets. At least three dozen were slain by the time he and his Wookiee and Twi'lek companions arrived._

_Juhani's anger completed her resolve. A vindictive burst of energy coursed through her body when she froze the Jedi's companions with the Force. He withdrew his blade, and she withdrew hers. Golden yellow on sunset red._

_The fight lasted perhaps half a minute._

_She knelt, overcome with exhaustion and the shame of defeat. Her indomitable dark powers had abandoned her to face the end alone, now. There was no more rage. Only shame._

_She was ready to die._

In his unkempt bunk, Coriff lay on his back, absorbed in deep thought.

How far Juhani had come since that fateful evening on the plains of Dantooine, where the terrible blackness of dark and hate stood so close to tearing another promising Jedi away from the path of the light. When she was first tested, her pride and anger blinded her. Juhani failed, but no man or woman ever achieves their destiny without failures along the way. He arrived to exterminate the dark influence enraging the kath hounds, and returned to the Enclave with a new friend and ally.

"_You… you are strong. Stronger than me, even in my darkness," she growled. Blood trickled from her lip and down her chin from the mighty strike of Coriff's elbow. Even in defeat, she was… stunning._

_He'd almost failed entirely to dodge her opening barrage of attacks, taken by her unique features. Coriff vaguely recalled seeing Cathar before, but no memory was as vivid as the sight before him. He was dispatched to eliminate a dark source. But he had no way of mentally preparing for what he encountered._

_How could she have fallen? "Who are you?" he inquired. Zaalbar and Mission emerged from stasis simultaneously and tore their weapons out, leveling them at the Cathar's head. The Jedi man waved them back._

_She rose to her feet, though her balance was shaky and unreliable. "I am Juhani, and this is my grove. This is the place of my dark power," her pained expression was lashed into the image of hatred and spite. Her lips curled into a fearsome snarl, and her eyes turned to slits. "This is the place you have invaded. When I embraced the dark side, this was where I sought my solace. It is mine!"_

"_You were a Jedi then?" A Jedi. A Jedi named Juhani._

"_A better Jedi than you will ever be. More powerful as well, for I could best _my_ teacher," her boast was not accompanied by a tone conveying pride or confidence. Here was a woman who had lived through pain and loss many times over now abandoned by the last thing to bring her comfort: The dark side. "When I slew my master, Quatra, I knew I could never go back. And now I revel in my dark power. Power enough to crush the life from someone such as you… or so I had _thought_…"_

_So she was the origin of the disruptive energies throwing the kath hounds into mindless rage._

"_The dark side is never powerful enough."_

_The Cathar breathed a heavy sigh knowing full well that the words the Jedi spoke were correct. "What is it you want? Why do you bother me?"_

_Because the source of the disturbance enraging the kath hounds must be destroyed._

"_Because I just want to talk."_

_ "Talk?! You who have beaten me so easily just want to talk? I do not believe it. Kill me now, while I am at your mercy," perhaps his accidental taunt was just as brutal to her psyche as his unrelenting attack._

_ It is said that only once in a Jedi's life will one feel a burning desire to save someone so vulnerable and full of potential from the clutches of the dark side. It is said that a Jedi can see his or her own spirit through the eyes of another. Coriff was not sure if he saw his own, but he knew that what he saw was beautiful behind the layer of wretched, corrupted grief obscuring her spirit._

_ "I have no desire to kill you, Juhani."_

_ "You… you do not?" The idea of mercy was no light pill to swallow. "I am pathetic. I sit here and think myself to be great by embracing the dark side, but I am nothing! There is no way I could be turned back!"_

Juhani calmed herself with deep breaths as she mediated. She took conservative sips of those electric memories, probing and investigating them as a connoisseur of fine foods might gently carry a flavor across their taste buds.

That Dantooine evening forged her devotion to the ideals of the Code like none other had; confidence in the truth of serenity and harmony filled the cracks left by fear and hate, in that watershed moment on Manaan mere hours ago the strength of her devotion was tested.

And she could do nothing but think of the man who supported her, and the man who was her salvation the first time she was tested.

_"I always thought they held me back, were jealous of my power. But it is only because I was not good enough to meet their standards… I never have been."_

_ "Come now, Juhani. You are a beautiful young woman who has limitless potential and talent."_

_ His encouraging words chipped away at the frigid casemate of rage that was her heart. Truly, beautiful and talented to no end? Endless words could be spoken, but the final truth was unavoidable: Quatra had been slain, not because Juhani was strong, but because she was weak._

_ "I thank you for your kind words, Jedi. I seem to still have much to learn… Both about being a Jedi, and about myself. But I wish the cost of my ignorance had not been so high. I wish that my master had not suffered because of me."_

_ "It is not your fault, Juhani."_

_ "I only wish things could have been different… If she were alive now, there would be so much I would say to her… So much I would apologize for. Oh, how can the Council ever take me back with what I have done? Striking my master down in anger is unforgivable!"_

_ "Do not worry, Juhani. They will surely take you back," how could the Jedi do any different? This man spoke as if he understood firsthand the meaning of humility and forgiveness in the manner of a true Jedi. But how much he truly experienced of this would be a hidden secret for much of their journey._

_ "I should convince them that I am truly repentant, that I am willing to forsake the dark side… Maybe, just maybe, they would accept me back. Do you think they would? Could it be possible after what I have done?"_

_ "Of course it would. They would always accept you back."_

_ Words so encouraging. Could they hold truth? So much pain remained, but Coriff's promises held so enticingly a grip over her mind…_

_ "I… I thank you, master Jedi."_

_ Juhani smiled. Coriff found this somehow infinitely pleasing, and smiled in return._

_ "I will return to the Council, then. I shall submit myself to their judgement, and hope that they will forgive me," the Cathar felt a heavy burden of pain relieve itself. "Again, I thank you. I am sure I will hear great things about you in the future."_

She turned it over in her head time after time. Yes, now she had proven her dedication to the Jedi values, but there was one weak spot in her defenses. Once clause that sat unwell and precarious.

Coriff could never be just an object of admiration. In the heat of combat, their eyes would meet. Fractions of a second would turn to years. An unspoken magnetism.

Faced with injustice and the intensity of battle, she would feel an invisible tie to his inner stability, anchoring herself to it so that she would not be too far lost in the midst of battle. Coriff was no ordinary Jedi, at least in Juhani's eyes. Sweeping through legions of Sand People or Dark Jedi he resembled a lethal jungle cat. Tentatively close, he never crossed the line into brutality and bloodlust; he met each challenge with the perfectly prescribed dosage of ferocity.

He was everything a Jedi should be.

Coriff sat up in his bed, swinging his legs around so that they hung off of the side. One hand clutched the bed's metal siding, while the other raked his scraggly brown rag, which stretched to the base of his neck to create a sort of jagged pattern along the end. He stood, and held still in place to assert his balance and alert his limbs after their extended period of inaction.

Ambiently and unconsciously, he deployed the Force to mask the reports of his steps as he exited the male dormitory. While in the hallway, his greater awareness was restored to full capacity and he detected the presence of one particular Force-sensitive member of the crew just outside the passageway, in the main hold. He took pause and laid a hand against the refresher door to his left.

"_Juhani."_

The intangible thought of a single intangible word weighed heavier than all the tonnage of the Sith fleet in that moment. Proceed, or not to proceed?

Coriff understood on an intimate level that he had countless words to say, even though he didn't yet know what many of them would be. Though his hand rested against the door, and he was not particularly exhausted, he began to feel worn, as if he was holding himself suspended in some manner of uncomfortable or tense position. He was in his undersuit, only covering him in a thin layer from his thighs to his neck. He didn't know what to say, or to feel. Even more critical, he knew nothing of what Juhani felt. The encounter ahead of him was a total mystery, but its enigmatic implications were immense beyond a shadow of doubt. Every reason not to proceed. Every reason to quietly turn around and go back to sleep, and likely forget that he was even up at this hour.

But he proceeded.

Her deep breaths subsided gently, regressing towards soft and unconscious sustainment once more as she lost herself in the flavors of her thoughts, once gentle tastes of the past that had evolved into a full meal. And while she did not notice it, the Cathar's lips curled into the faintest sort of smile. A smile that is not so much a display of emotion meant for others, but a private and unknown manifestation of one's deepest thoughts.

Soon, she felt Coriff in her meditation, standing out amongst the various other Force auras and emanations on the Ebon Hawk. Slowly awakening, moving. She held her meditations parallel to silent observation of the mighty Jedi through the Force.

_"Coriff."_

The object of her nascent thoughts - nay, fascination - took a pause, it seemed. Her eyes were not open, but through the frozen silence of the ship and above the subtle ambient noise of the hyperdrive, her other senses, concentrated and attuned Force sensitivity included, were acutely aware of his presence and position.

At one particular point, her breathing ceased. In total silence, an alien feeling of anxiety tingled down her spine and into the pit of her stomach. Mild, but certainly present. Would he continue? Why was he even up? Did he desire to speak with her? Perhaps he was just hungry, or thirsty. Perhaps his intentions were as plain as wanting to check that the ship was properly on course. Every reason that his business was routine.

But he proceeded.

"Juhani." he said.

"Coriff." she replied.

Her eyes came open, and she looked upon him with an air of curiosity. Her brows were raised, and her pure black pupils were keenly focused. Her meditative stance had grown comfortable, immediately indicating that she had been there for quite some time.

"I didn't mean to interrupt your meditation. I apologize." Coriff stepped through the end of the hallway and fully into the main hold, standing behind the nearest couch and placing a hand on top of it.

Juhani shook her head. "No no, it is... nothing. I was just thinking," she brought her hands together from their meditative positions, placing them one over the other between her legs on the surface of the holoprojector. "Did you want something?"

The soldier-turned-Jedi nodded once, and stepped around the couch. He leisurely set himself down on the cushion, and returned Juhani's gaze. Due to Coriff's height, he needed only to look up a little bit to match her eyes while she sat atop the center console.

"I do, but I don't exactly know what," he placed his elbow in his palm and rested his chin on his fist in a philosopher's pose, "I was also thinking, actually."

"About what?" her head cocked a few degrees to the left in inquiry.

"About you." Coriff straightened his back and returned his hands to the top of his legs.

If there was any time to be honest, it was now. What he truly thought about Juhani, and what he had learned were both unknowns. But what time for deception and untruth would this be? Two Jedi, alone, at a time of meditation for one of them. And why would he need to deceive when he didn't even know what the sacred nugget of truth at the core of it all even was?

The truth rose from his gut, tossing aside the feeble justifications of his rational mind. _"Maybe,"_ he thought, _"I'm only trying to deceive myself."_

Juhani's eyes opened fully in quiet surprise.

"I was thinking about how much you've overcome."

_"And your wit."_

"And your determination in the face of hardship."

_"And that amused little smirk you get when we fight past an ambush."_

"How you never let rage overcome you in the heat of battle."

_"How you afford me so warmly after you tell me about Taris and Cathar."_

"And the way you stick to the Light when the galaxy is always trying to tear you down."

"_The way you look at me with those jet-black on golden-yellow eyes."_

He swung his left arm over the back of the couch and reclined a little. He'd said his piece and told those heavy truths. Not all to her, but in a more essential way, to himself. Would he be able to tell _her_ more than half-truths?

Why would he be thinking about her? At the same time when her mind's eye was locked unquestionably on him, as well? She had thought many of the same things; he'd overcome countless struggles, he was the most determined Jedi she'd ever witnessed, and he walked with infinite comfort the thin line demarcating furious battle and the embrace of rage and hatred.

However, the last item was something that he would not understand. She had fallen once and almost twice, which is almost twice too much for any Jedi worthy of carrying a lightsaber in the name of the Light. But Coriff? Coriff had not fallen once. For the entirety of his brief career as a Jedi, the Light had come to him as easily as basic arithmetic. Wherever the Ebon Hawk went, he selflessly doled out parcels of kindness in the form of food and credits. At other times, he would defend the innocent with no regard for his own life and make calculated non-lethal attacks over easy killing blows, no matter how risky, so long as the opportunity presented itself.

Juhani would not have done those things, she thought. She would be too tight with money and resources. For the sake of the mission, she would sequester whatever the crew had. She would kill a defenseless opponent in anger, or even attack when an attack was wholly superfluous, for the sake of the mission.

These kindnesses were only distributed because of Coriff's resolve, even in her _own_ fights. With Xor, she would have fallen to her rage if not for the man who just claimed she had the strength to overcome.

In the midst of these conclusions and hollow realizations, Juhani came to be aware of the poisonous silence in the air. It seeped into her lungs, and she abruptly felt that the persistence of such silence would be the death of her.

"I… also thought about you, Coriff." Juhani unfurled her legs and turned herself to face the only other individual in the hold. She sat on the edge of the projector, her hands in her lap and her feet touching the floor. "About many of the same things."

Many of the same things, but more, as well. She recalled the features of her memories which drew her attention most. Coriff's resolve. Coriff's laugh. Coriff's face. Coriff's glances.

Coriff's magnetism. The unshakeable magnetism, so intense in its strength that Juhani began to feel something akin to a warm draft trailing up the inside of her back at its mere acknowledgement.

Its effects, and what it drove Juhani to do and feel, were decidedly less comforting. The longer she looked at him now, the heavier her heart became. Little pieces of mass that slowly piled up with the seconds, until the feeling grew so that it had to be relieved in some way.

"Admittedly, not just about overcoming challenges in our travels, but… about other things…" she trailed off aimlessly, tense to be honest with herself and honest to Coriff.

"About what?" he inched forward in his seat. The mission? The Jedi? Perhaps… _him_?" His lips straightened into a thin line and he clasped his hands together before his chest. Mentally and physically, he was disciplined and at attention.

Juhani quivered just slightly, enough to be noticeable, but only to one in a calm and focused state. Two black orbs were cast down at the steel deck in aversion of the other's gaze.

"Things that a Jedi should not think about. But," the corners of her lips articulated into a frown and her brows sank, "I suppose I don't have a history of being a good Jedi, do I?" Juhani wrung her hands in absentminded shame mixed with helpings of anxiety.

Coriff took what seemed to be immediate offense at such an idea. "Don't be ridiculous. You redeemed yourself on Dantooine, and I don't even need to mention Xor-" the next words were halted in the man's throat by sharp interruption.

"I only overcame those obstacles because of _you_! You, who are such a _great _Jedi, willing to come to my aid so often…"

He shook his head assertively in reply, and raised a hand to block the lingering of Juhani's words. "All I've ever done has just been to help you along to the right path. You've had to stay on it with your own willpower each time."

"Perhaps you are right. I suppose your ability to help might enable you to know that, too." her tone was softer and resigned. She had surrendered this point, whether she truly believed it or not.

A few beats of poisonous silence went by.

"What is your struggle now? Is it Xor?" Coriff gently probed.

"It is not him, it is… different. It is not hate or rage that I am suffering. I've become... clouded." 

"How so? What emotions are you feeling?" Coriff took on a more caring air as opposed to an inquisitive one, for the present moment now occupied with Juhani's well-being over simply knowing her thoughts.

"Passion and…" the next words struggled from her throat, "affection. I think I have become attracted to a man."

_"Me?"_

"Is it Dak?"

Juhani put the thought to rest with an exaggerated wave of her hand. "No, not Dak. He is someone I realize that I depend on. Someone… I have become close to."

_"Me."_

"It's Jolee, isn't it?" Coriff's joke and little smile managed to cut through a portion of the tension, and elicited a light chuckle from the Cathar woman inches away.

_"Someone she depends on. Someone she's close to."_

"I may not be a particularly wise or experienced Jedi, but I don't believe that it's a bad thing to have affection, or to feel love."

"_Love? Where did that come from?"_

"So long as it doesn't consume you, love is like… a sort of elevated kindness, in a way. Two people looking out for, and caring for each other, always ready to help their partner up when they fall."

"_I'm a fool."_

_"I'm failing."_

"But a good Jedi cannot open themselves up to that risk. What if one falls, and takes the other? Or perhaps one may die and drive the survivor to the Dark. Or they become so… mutually obsessed that they shut out their principles and duties?" Juhani grew to feel more and more in denial than properly defending the Code.

Coriff's abrupt rise to his feet caused a split-second of surprise, and Juhani drew back a little in instinctive response.

"If opening yourself to love makes you a bad Jedi, then I sure as hell don't want to be a good one." resolutely, he drew his line in the sand.

This was the same man who possessed an endless devotion to spreading peace, who would never fall even when in the greatest fury of the greatest battles. Of course, in what galaxy would he be a servant of the Dark and a fallen Jedi? The thought itself was incredulous.

_"If the Order and the Code would brand his principles bad, it would only tell me who was more attuned to the truth."_

So Juhani, too, rose from her seat atop the console and look Coriff in the eyes from only a few inches below. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. Her face bore an inflated confidence and determination, but a growing cold sweat and a swirling cauldron of fear in her chest defeated the theory that either were truly genuine - or at least, lasting. She steeled herself and ignored her flagging morale.

She leaned forward, smoothly and quickly laying her lips upon his for the briefest of moments. Juhani held herself still and her expression consistent after her retreat, but in her mind was ignited a new firestorm.

"I… I… I care for you. I do not know why. I do not know if anything will be possible or if you even return what I feel, but I do know it is there."

Surprise in his eyes. Raised eyebrows. Stunned. With the aid of desperation's furor and her still-attuned Force affinity, she reached out for surface emotions; superficial things that would appear so spontaneously and strongly so as to be impossible to bury, to mask. And not only did Juhani detect these emotions, she understood them in an instant on an intimate level.

They were the same emotions she experienced a moment prior.

But before the Cathar could process such a revelation, Coriff replied without words. His lips met hers, but remained. Two rough and calloused hands, those of a frequent duelist, slid against the palms of her own. Tentatively, they wrapped around their new complements.

Juhani was too unfamiliar to be able to immediately identify flowering growths of emotion swirling up her spine and through her entire body to be such a pure form of joy.

"_Am I dreaming?"_

Coriff did not retreat as Juhani originally had, but merely pulled his face back a scant few inches.

_"Was that real? Did I actually do that? Did _she_ actually do that?"_

His inner confusion was placated and usurped by an airy warmth of satisfaction in his chest. As he looked at Juhani, gazing through the leagues of depth sequestered in her eyes, he felt overcome by pulsing waves of affection. Her every feature now seemed to shine for him as his heart ached at being apart, where inches felt like lightyears.

He ignored the diminutive calls for abstinence and rationality poking in the rear of his mind and let slip to follow his emotions, bringing his arms around his Jedi companion's back in embrace and planting again his lips on hers.

Juhani reciprocated with careful glee, at first, but soon became just as deeply consumed in emotion. She laid her arms around Coriff's neck and pulled them closer together. His right hand gingerly traveled up her side to stroke the softness of her face with calloused, battle-worn digits.

Both sighed lightly as their oral exultations carried on and on. Almost a minute after their third engagement began, they mutually drew apart to breathe and look upon each other without surrendering their embrace.

For much of the _Ebon Hawk_'s valiant journey up to that point, Coriff had at times questioned what he truly fought to protect in the Republic; he knew he had a father and a mother somewhere in the Rim, but the time and distance apart had been so great there were no longer faces to put to names. Other than that, all he'd ever been able to satisfy himself with was that the Republic was innately virtuous enough to warrant protect.

Such tenuous justifications were set aside. In an instant, he saw what he might truly begin to fight for. For a moment, he combed recent memory in order to pick up where the conversation had left off. "I do, Juhani," he grasped her hands once more as he spoke, "I return what you feel."

The Cathar's face lit up with wonderment as her mouth opened and closed several times in the span of a few seconds, determined to express its owner's newfound elation but at a loss for just how to articulate it. She opted not to speak and briefly averted her gaze out of primal bashfulness. Two arms wrapped around Coriff's midsection as his newfound interest nestled her head in the crook of his neck, savoring the warmth of his flesh and the worn surface fuzz of his mute brown robes, who in their recently deteriorating condition afforded less and less protection in the myriad scrapes the wearer became involved with.

Juhani stirred.

"What?" Coriff hummed peacefully.

"Well…" Juhani mumbled, "I'm not sure I'll be able to finish my meditation now."

"What makes you say that?" Coriff's hand wandered up and down the Cathar's back, resting on the small and gently pressing her closer. "We can stop if you'd like."

Juhani grumbled and kissed him. "Don't say stupid things. Just stay with me."


End file.
